Now that we have a better understanding of CRM as a whole, the available options and some of the capabilities, let's discuss how SugarCRM fits into that context. So, what is "SugarCRM?"
SugarCRM is both a company and a full featured mature open source CRM application.
SugarCRM, the company, was created as a commercial open source company in 2004, headquartered in Cupertino, California, U.S.A. minutes away from technology giants, such as Apple. Its business model is to not only develop an open source CRM product, but to also develop enhanced versions of the same product as commercial ventures. The organization's financial resources come from a combination of venture capital funding as well as customers using the commercial products.
SugarCRM, the product, is offered in three different flavors: Community Edition (CE), Professional Edition (PRO) and Enterprise Edition (ENT). The Professional and Enterprise Editions are two of the aforementioned commercial offerings; thus, CE is the only edition that is free of licensing costs. All three are open source, meaning the source code for all editions is accessible, albeit the source for PRO and ENT is only available to paying customers.
In addition to the licensing costs, another important distinction between CE and the other two, is the feature set. If we place each edition on separate tiers, the Enterprise Edition would be the topmost tier. It is the most feature-rich of the three editions and includes all available functionality. Professional Edition would reside in the tier directly below as it contains a subset of the features found in ENT, but still more than those in CE. Lastly, Community Edition would be at the very bottom. The latter contains a subset of features found in PRO. Given the differences, it is important to clarify that this book focuses on the Community Edition.
Another important differentiator between the various editions is the available deployment options. All editions support on-site and on-demand deployment models. However, SugarCRM (the company) does not offer on-demand subscriptions on its data center for CE users. Community Edition users interested in using an on-demand deployment must either host it themselves or find a suitable third-party that can offer the required service to them.
Being open source usually means you can easily download the application from somewhere out in the vastness of the Internet. SugarCRM is no exception. The product's official Internet home is located at http://www.sugarforge.org/, where you can download not only Community Edition, but also community contributed enhancements for it which we will explore later in this book.
It is worth noting that the nature of open source is such that if one day (perish the thought), SugarCRM, the company was no more; SugarCRM, the product would carry on, as the community at large has full access to the source code and would be able to continue to improve it. The two (company and product) are quite separate entities in law. Thus, using SugarCRM should not make you worry about the stability of the vendor.
The project was established on April 23, 2004, and saw its 1.0 release on August 4, 2004. Since that date, SugarCRM has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, and both the product and the company have matured dramatically. The current 5.5 release (current as of this writing), was released in December 2009 and bears little resemblance to the original 1.0 product in appearance and functionality.
The large selection of CRM options available today has a tendency to make the process of picking the right one for your business a bit daunting. Given the breadth of options, it is only natural that you would ask yourself, why should I use SugarCRM?
There are many reasons as to why SugarCRM is a great CRM solution for many businesses. Some of those relate to the technical aspects of the application, while others relate to the application's ability to address the needs of small and medium-size businesses. Let us discuss some of these reasons in greater detail as follows:
Open standards: SugarCRM's most obvious differentiator is its licensing model. It is an open source licensed application, meaning its source code is freely available to the public at large. On the surface, this may sound like something only the technical crowd would care about, but that is far from the truth. Open source means that there are not any licensing fees to worry about, regardless of how much data you wish to store or how many users you wish to have accessing the system. Your limitations are more directly tied to the ability of your infrastructure to scale and/or to handle your increased needs, as SugarCRM itself will not limit you in any way.
In the SugarCRM world, openness takes on additional significance. SugarCRM is built using other popular open source technologies such as PHP and MySQL, which means you are free to do what you wish, with not only the code, but the data. Your data is not locked in a proprietary system or to a specific vendor. Perhaps more importantly and to the point, an open source license helps cut expenses.
Deployment options: The architecture of SugarCRM facilitates its deployment on a wide variety of platforms, ranging from the ubiquitous Microsoft Windows to more niche players like Sun Solaris. SugarCRM is thus able to easily leverage your already existing infrastructure for on-site deployments.
It can also just as effectively leverage low cost hosting providers or cloud based computing services, such as Amazon's EC2 if you prefer to not take on the responsibilities associated with on-site deployments. The on-demand approach can help your business save money by reducing or eliminating the costs involved in maintaining related infrastructure, for example, electricity charges, IT services, hardware expenses, and in some cases, office space.
Since SugarCRM is so easily ported from one environment to another, you can also easily switch between on-site and on-demand (or vice-versa) at any time. Many organizations opt to begin with a hosted deployment and later make the transition to an on-premise solution when the needs of the business require it.
Customization and extensibility: Direct access to the source code used to produce SugarCRM means there are virtually endless possibilities for what can be accomplished from a customization standpoint. However, most businesses will never need to make modifications to the source code, as the system provides many other mechanisms for customizing SugarCRM and extending its reach within your business. Combined with its robust Application Programming Interface (API) and open underpinnings, there are few customization or extensibility challenges that SugarCRM cannot overcome.
While the availability of the source code erases many limitations you might otherwise encounter with other products, it is also important to set specific limits on the extent of customizations you wish to perform. Otherwise, you may quickly find yourself in a scenario where your CRM system is in a constant state of customization, but never actually used in production. It may also lead you down a path where said customizations make future upgrades a difficult or very time consuming task. Later chapters will expand on this topic.
Internationalization: Today, businesses of every size, from the very small to very large multi-national organizations, are all competing on the global marketplace at one level or another. This phenomena has forced software vendors to design applications that are better suited to such conditions and better equipped to handle distributed work forces, even if they don't all speak the same language or use the same currency. SugarCRM includes this functionality out-of-the box. It is designed for the global business environment, even if your business is only now getting into it.
For many businesses, the savings from the elimination of licensing costs alone is a sufficient reason to adopt SugarCRM. However, as you can see, there are a number of other reasons that make it a viable solution for just about any business.